Much indebted to ya

Mrs Guambat eats books. One of her authors of choice is Margaret Atwood. Mrs Guambat would happily have one of hers for lunch.

The WSJ carried an article written by her today. Marching to the meme du jour, it was about debt, delightfully entitled Debtor's Prism.

The hidden metaphors are revealing: We get "into" debt, as if into a prison, swamp, or well, or possibly a bed; we get "out" of it, as if coming into the open air or climbing out of a hole. If we are "overwhelmed" by debt, the image is possibly that of a foundering ship, with the sea and the waves pouring inexorably in on top of us as we flail and choke. All of this sounds dramatic, with much physical activity: jumping in, leaping or clambering out, thrashing around, drowning. Metaphorically, the debt plot line is a far cry from the glum actuality, in which the debtor sits at a desk fiddling around with numbers on a screen, or shuffles past-due bills in the hope that they will go away, or paces the room wondering how he can possibly extricate himself from the fiscal molasses.

In our minds -- as reflected in our language -- debt is a mental or spiritual non-place, like the Hell described by Christopher Marlowe's Mephistopheles when Faust asks him why he's not in Hell but right there in the same room as Faust. "Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it," says Mephistopheles. He carries Hell around with him like a private climate: He's in it and it's in him. Substitute "debt" and you can see that, in the way we talk about it, debt is the same kind of placeless place. "Why, this is Debt, nor am I out of it," the beleaguered debtor might similarly declaim.

Which makes the whole idea of debt -- especially massive and hopeless debt -- sound brave and noble and interesting rather than merely squalid, and gives it a larger-than-life tragic air. Could it be that some people get into debt because, like speeding on a motorbike, it adds an adrenalin hit to their otherwise humdrum lives? When the bailiffs are knocking at the door and the lights go off because you didn't pay the water bill and the bank's threatening to foreclose, at least you can't complain of ennui.

It's the kind of article that can almost give debt a good name, much in the same way that hedge funds and the investment banks uplifted "leverage" to a holy grail.

And Guambat wonders if that is a good thing. How can we concoct stories for the grandkids, or live them through, about meanness and despair in a time of desperation if it's all just a plot line, merely "one damn thing after another, as we glibly say in creative writing classes", as Atwood frames it?

Perhaps it's the difference between living the blues and singing the blues, but Guambat reckons this is not going to be much of a depression if we're already singing the blues before we live them. If market bottoms are born of window-jumping fear and anguish, we're not going to put one in as long as we trivialize and alienate the actor from the antagonism.

Which is not to take away from Mrs Guambat's mid-afternoon snack on an Atwood short tale. Her discussion of debt as game and storyline, her "conversation" with Scrooge, are all engaging and well told. It's a pleasant diversion, and the sidebars about the literature and history of debtors provides a relishing touch of presentation.